Tomorrow marks the 64th anniversary of D-Day, which launched the invasion of Normandy and the Western Allied effort to liberate mainland Europe from Nazi occupation in World War II.

Jim Segan of Crafton was there. He landed on bloody Omaha Beach, which is where the U.S. suffered most of its D-Day casualties .

He was a frightened young man of 24 who remembers seeing death all around him as he waded to shore under heavy fire after debarking from the landing craft.

Segan is now 88. He lives in Texas and is amazingly self-reliant, as evidenced by his trip to Crafton for Memorial Day, as he drove here by himself.

Most 88-year-olds are solely dependent upon nursing care. Not Jim Segan, who remains self-sufficient in his twilight years.

He came all this way to read names of fallen soldiers during Crafton's Memorial Day observance last week.

Mark Schuster founded Crafton's War Memorial Dedication project three years ago, enlisting help from seven local World War II veterans whom he would come to call his "seven elders" -- Chuck Grube, Bill O'Connell, Jack Gorman, Chuck O'Mahoney, Joe Murray and the late Tom Witt and Clary Stewart.

Segan was not among them, as he lived in Texas, but he remained close to one of them, Gorman.

Traditionally on Memorial Day, the "seven elders" would read the names of Crafton's war dead. In a phone call one night recently, Gorman mentioned to Segan how two of the group had passed away and how Murray and O'Mahoney were ill and could not make it this year.

"Next thing Jack knew, Jim Segan is knocking on his door," Schuster said.

He drove up to help read the names on Memorial Day.

Not wanting his dear friend to drive home alone, Gorman accompanied him back to Texas.

Segan and the "seven elders" are shining stars in the "Greatest Generation."

We owe a lot to them. We have maintained our freedom because of their brave deeds when it mattered most and everything was on the line.

Segan and other WWII vets read 97 names on this year's memorial.

Schuster remembers how he and the seven elders had come up with 40 names by the end of their first meeting, including four boys who lived within a block of each other and died in World War II.

"Remember, Crafton is one square mile," Schuster said.

The committee eventually expanded the memorial to include not only soldiers who grew up in Crafton, but any who attended school or church there.

Segan was in the 29th Infantry and remembers D-Day as if it were yesterday.

There were 41 solders on the landing craft, and only nine made it to the beach, including Segan.

He credits his life to a pair of "blow-up packs" around his waist that kept him afloat in six feet of water.

"Many of the other guys discarded the packs and left them on the boat," Schuster said. "They already had 120 pounds of equipment. Jimmy couldn't swim, so he wore two blow-up packs."

To this day, Segan believes most of his mates died because they sank to the bottom with so much equipment and no inflatable packs to keep them afloat.

Segan had trained for D-Day in England for two years. This included swishing and churning on baby boats in the English Channel.

There had long been talk of an invasion force in France, but on June 6, 1944, Segan remembers a "know-it-all in the 29th" saying "today's the day."

The kid even took bets, as his mates discounted his prediction.

Someone asked him why he felt it would be the day, and the soldier looked to the wharf and said, "Look there, and what do you see? You see English women there to say goodbye to their men."

The invasion began shortly thereafter.